


The Problems of Understanding

by arktus



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: M/M, and a drink, and probably has some trust issues, friends loss, illusions loss, inquisitor is tired and needs a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-14 05:08:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20186764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arktus/pseuds/arktus
Summary: Trevelyan only had one problem: he always understood everything.





	The Problems of Understanding

**Author's Note:**

> English is not my first language and I'm very sorry for all the possible mistakes. I'll try to correct them eventually and I'll be very grateful if you point them out.  
I also wasn't sure what rating I should put, so it's M for now.

Maxwell Trevelyan never thought that life would promise him a great future. It was kind of hard to think so when his life started with the pale face of his mother and the iron glove resting on his shoulder.

When he is ten, he leaves the estate never to return again.

Lady Trevelyan silently watches him, Maxwell sees her tightly closed mouth and the collapse of hope in her gray eyes. He sees that she has long said goodbye to him and practically buried him.

To be honest, he understands it perfectly.

_But it doesn't mean he's not hurt._

It’s hard there in the Circle. The youngest child — Maxwell is not used to the fact that people whom he's never seen before decide what he will do today, what he'll wear, where he'll go. He is not used to the idea that except for the walls of the tower he will no longer see grass, water, or sunlight.

After lunch, he used to practice fencing with his brother. There's not even a yard where he can walk.

A wooden sword is taken from him, a mantle is given, and he is seated at a table with those others who don't understand anything at all. Just like him: unaccustomed and frightened.

The first few days Maxwell simply cries, but the elder mages don't have time for him. _It will pass_ — he reads in their eyes. _We were like that too._

It seems to him that he understands, but it's hard.

In six years he receives no more than a few dozens of letters. They say that his elder brother got married, that the middle one had become a servant of the Church, that his father had died. After this there are even fewer of them until the letters stop coming at all.

Maxwell is a shameful stigma in his family's history, and he understands everything perfectly.

_But it doesn't mean he's not hurt._

In the Circle it’s hard to hope for privacy of any kind, they're all fully viewed: in front of the elder mages, in front of the templars, in front of other students. “You're dangerous,” they are told. “Slow motion bombs, and it’s our duty to protect you from your power.”

Maxwell understands it, he knows what it means to be in Fade, and these words give him the illusion of safety. Not for himself but for others.

Maxwell understands, but sometimes he thinks: to lock ten-year-old children in the pantries for an accidentally stained mantle, to observe every their move day and night, to pry into their personal life, like into dirty linen — _is that also a duty_?

Sharing the bedrooms with a dozen of students, Maxwell almost forgets what his own room in the estate looked like.

He forgets the voice of his father, the gray glance of his mother, the smell of a mulberry pie in the kitchen.

And he lives like that — two years, three, four... Hiding thoughts, reading books, sometimes secretly playing Wicked Grace with older students.

Maxwell has friends who are just like him: an elf with a strange name _Mahanon_, the former apostate _Sadia_ and _Kenneth_. Kenneth is also from the Free Marches, not from Ostwick however, but Ansburg. Why he is _here_ Kenneth doesn't tell them.

Time with them is not like time at home, time with them is not like anything at all, and Maxwell sometimes thinks about how fragile it is and dependant on any word of the Knight-Commander.

This is all he has. He understands.

But it doesn't mean that the win in Wicked Grace is not bitter.

Sometimes during the changing of the guard and when he cannot sleep, Maxwell allows himself to sneak into the kitchen for a pie with rhubarb.

During one of such leaves he meets Kenneth. He sits at the table, eating a pie almost viciously, his nose in rhubarb, his fingers in rhubarb, rhubarb jam dripping on the table. Maxwell could have become disgusted if he had not been so fascinated by the pie, the absurdity of the situation, and Kenneth in general.

“There's still some left,” says Kenneth, barely chewing.

Maxwell realizes that he is an idiot.

He spends three weeks tormenting himself and during that time he becomes sullen and silent like never before, another two are devoted to an awkward, almost puppy flirtation. Mahanon raises his eyebrows in surprise, Sadia giggles. Maxwell understands everything, but he can't stop.

He will regret it.

But he doesn't have much choice.

He can't say for sure when it gets to Kenneth, but at one moment the awkward flirtation develops into something mutual. Maxwell knows that all of this is short-lived, he knows that there's at least one templar in each hall, and the probability of being somewhere together is negligible, but he still feels so incredible and light, that it is almost annoying.

He steals kisses from Kenneth in the corners, he sets his robes on fire, he loses — for the first time — in Wicked Grace.

He doesn't care.

One night Kenneth pulls his blanket and climbs into his bed.

“I'm sick of it,” he says.

“Me too,” Maxwell thinks, kissing a lock of his hair. “Me too.”

  
Kenneth leaves before everyone wakes up.

“You understand,” he says in the morning.

Maxwell understands.

But that doesn’t mean anything.

When the news of the Kirkwall rebellion reaches them, they don't give it much of importance. Weeks go by, rumors don't cease, and no one hurries to restore the Kirkwall's Circle. Silence settles in the tower. Maxwell knows what it means.

“It is the calm before the storm,” he thinks, “fragile and short-lived.” And the storm comes.

He wakes up one night — from the noise, screams and stamping. Before Maxwell realises what happened, the Circle is already burning, wreathed in flame, magic and lyrium flashes. He puts on the first thing that comes to hand, grabs the stave and runs out into the corridor.

An electric arrow crashes into the wall next to his head.  
“Maker!” exclaims Sadia. “Sorry, I didn’t think it was you.”  
“What happened?”  
From the lower floors metal ringing, roar and screams reach to them. Instead of answering Sadia lowers her gaze to the floor, and Maxwell no longer needs the explanation.

“We have to leave.”

He grabs her hand, together they run along the corridor, down the stairs.

Which are probably blocked.

But there's no other way.

Either down or up.

On the stairs they run into Kenneth.

“Enough!” he yells.

There are other mages with him, about seven people, all of them in soot and blood, their mantles are torn and smeared. Kenneth notices Maxwell. He turns and then the point of the sword shows from his chest.

Maxwell always knew this was short-lived. Ephemeral.

_But it doesn't mean he's not hurt._

He can hear Sadia screaming as if from the side, and then everything is drowning in a ringing and dazzling white flash. The last thing Maxwell remembers is the heat of fire and the cold of the floor.

When he opens his eyes, everything is strangely quiet around him, only the flame approaches. He feels heavy. He reaches to his forehead and hisses in pain, a sticky red mark remains on his fingers. The ringing in the ears gradually subsides, Maxwell tries to push an obstructive source of gravity aside, and then feels a shoulder, a hand, an unexpectedly soft thigh. Almost yelling, he pulls to the side and immediately rests on Kenneth's lifeless body, turned to him with his head.

Maxwell is sick. He feels nauseous.

He crawls away hastily before throwing up right on the stairs. The heat burns at his feet, his back under the mantle is disgustingly wet. With a trembling hand he erases the sweat from his eyelids and almost rolls from the stairs.

The floor on the lower levels is covered with dead bodies, he steps over them, moving along the wall. The stairs are empty, everywhere is empty, but every time he shies away even hearing something remotely like steps. Even a stave picked up somewhere doesn't give him a sense of security.

Hiding in niches and behind doors, Maxwell recalls that there must be the back door from the kitchen, and somehow gets there.

He still sees a chest, covered with a mantle, and a sword sticking out of it right in front of him.

In the kitchen luck betrays him. Maxwell remembers this templar, standing there. He is still very young, maybe one or two years older than him. He remembers how the Knight-Commander scolded him in the middle of the corridor, he remembers how this templar knelt for several hours, repeating by heart the lines from the Chant of Light afterwards.

“Please,” says Maxwell. “Please, I don't want to. Don't make me.”

He sees that the templar is scared, just like him. Maxwell understands everything before the templar reaches for his sword. Maxwell appears to be faster than him.

He falls, bursts into the fresh air with a convulsive breath, like a dying man in the middle of the desert.

Maxwell understands that if this templar hadn't been yesterday's recruit, he would have joined the corpses on the floor.

He understands, but it doesn't make everything any easier.

He hears the rumors about the delegation by accident, being on the run for several days. He also has to get rid of the stave so that no one could tie him up at the very first corner, so the news about the united group of mages becomes salvation. Maxwell has nowhere to go, nowhere to return, he has _nothing_ left, so he sells the family ring and rushes to where the mages were last seen.

Another idiotic decision in his piggy bank of idiotic decisions.

But there's little choice.

***

At the Conclave, before falling into oblivion, Maxwell has time to gloomily think that his whole life is like a series of blackouts and awakenings as something heavy hits him on the head.

***

He never had the opportunity to travel in time. He learned how to close breaches, he saw the demons from the Fade with his own eyes, but there was no case of him jumping from one timeline to another.

However, he is not alone in this distorted proof that if something can go wrong, it will.

Dorian - Dorian from House of Pavus — is like an alien element to him, here in the Redcliffe prison, reeking of lyrium stench. This is madness, and Maxwell feels like he's returned to the Circle again, walking among the mangled bodies. He is nauseous again: from Varrick, muttering under his breath, from Cassandra, who is trying to find salvation in the Chant of Light.

He understands that he isn't responsible for this, but the corridors just don't end. Dorian walks ahead — confident, even despite his blood-stained clothes, or the long scratch on his bare shoulder. Maxwell knows that he should be ashamed, but instead of shame he feels tiredness rolling in waves around him.

This goes on forever — the search for fragments, and for the first time in his life Maxwell sees so many fanatics, so many mages who are ready to _kill_ just for the idea. Maxwell is not a fanatic, he didn't wake up in the cradle with a stave in his hands, and with each venatori killed it is harder to walk.

He is thinking of the Circle.

Was what happened there the result of blind fanaticism or...

“We're here.”

They stop at the door to the main hall. Maxwell understands that there is no other way out of here, this is the only one.

But it doesn't mean that he is ready.

No one asks him.

Reality — _his _— is felt with an ashy aftertaste from the dungeons.

Maxwell stands at the war table and tries not to look at Leliana's face. While Cassandra and Cullen argue about the appropriateness of his decision, he absent-mindedly plays with a tiny flag between his fingers.

“The voice of pragmatism speaks! And here I was just starting to enjoy the circular arguments.”

This practically unknown mage— Dorian — leaning against the doorjamb, throwing in the witty remarks, seems so... steady. Unlike Maxwell, who feels completely empty, like a scorched field — a shell without a nut, a husk from a rhizome — Dorian looks like he is here in his own right.

“All that matters is to close the Breach.”

“Yes”, Maxwell thinks, “the Breach.”

It is important to focus on the primary things. To close the Breach, to find the other Breaches, to find out who this Elder one is, and then? What's then?

Maxwell looks at Dorian, who now is also a part of the Inquisition. Dorian who in these dim lights looks like it wasn't him who walked knee-deep in the muddy water of dungeons a couple of hours ago.

Maxwell hastily turns away.

He realizes that this calm is short. He is right.

If something _can_ go wrong, it will.

Of course, they are not allowed to rest. Of course, everything is rapidly rolling into the Abyss.

When they're attacked, it becomes very clear to Maxwell that he can't save everyone. He barely manages to pull the innkeeper from under the wreckage of the ruined inn before its wooden frame collapses.

Maxwell won't be able to save everyone — he understands that. But it doesn't mean he can accept it.

The dragon roars somewhere in the distance, and staying behind this time is unexpectedly easy. Maxwell is not much of a hero.

Everything could be different.

But it doesn’t matter anymore.

Instead of freezing to death, he survives.

“I guess I seriously owe someone in Wicked Grace,” Maxwell thinks.

His new title is bitter. Inquisitor. Inquisitor. Maxwell wants to joke: whom, they say, must be inquired.

Instead of bedrooms divided into zones, now he has _personal chambers_. There is a bed there — _his_, a table — _his_, even _a fireplace_.

In order to get this, all that he was needed to do is to appear in the wrong place at the wrong time.

At first, Maxwell stays apart, but soon he begins to slowly explore the surroundings.

For the first time in his life Maxwell finds himself in a tavern, and there are too many things there: smells, voices, noise. First, his head is clouded from such a variety, then he notices familiar faces.

“Hey, Boss!

This is also new.

Maxwell sits on a solid bench, a full mug of something immediately appears in front of him. He drinks, not even knowing what it is, and a tight knot inside his chest begins to untie slowly.

“It is not good,” Maxwell understands. He wants to talk, to drink, to play something not too virtuous, Wicked Grace maybe. At one point, he realises that he's tossing cards with Varrik, while the Bulls are watching him with visible approval in thier eyes.

_“Better,”_ the ghost boy says suddenly. _“Finally better.”_

Maxwell doesn't have time to ask what it is about; his world is drowning in the sparkle of buckles.

“Sparkles, isn't it too early for an evening drink?”

“But you are here, my dear dwarf.”

Warrick grunts and moves.

_“Sparkles,”_ Maxwell thinks. “Truly.”

He watches them: Sera, Varrick, Madame de Fer. Cullen, who flickers before his eyes as a painful reminder. Dorian.

Watching Dorian almost becomes his habit. Maxwell can't understand what needs to be done, to whom he needs to sell his soul in order to be so free. Dorian lives on magic, he revels in it, as Maxwell once reveled in his short training with a sword. There is not a drop of shame in Dorian's movements, nor a crumb of constraint. All the mages that Maxwell had ever seen are not like him. No matter how old they were and what the level of their skills was, he could always discern the same thing in them behind the stave and worked-out movements: the tightness. _The burden._

Maxwell feels it himself whenever the stave falls into his hand.

Magic pulls him to the ground. Dorian is not like him.

“Dorian is not like anyone,” he thinks, and immediately breaks off. This is not good.

Sometimes Maxwell allows himself to sneak his way through the night into the kitchen. He sits at the table in pants and a simple shirt, and a piece of pie with mulberry in his hand is bitter.

In one of such nights he hears a short rustle. His heart misses a beat: not only because he is absolutely defenseless, but also because all his fingers are in the pie and it looks ridiculous.

First a ball of light shows in the doorway, then Maxwell gets a glimpse of the buckle in the eye.

“Inquisitor?”

He is ready to die of shame. If Dorian is surprised, he doesn't show it in any way.

“And I thought I was the only one who couldn't sleep.”

Dorian stands in his sparkling clothes, his bare shoulder is visible in the twilight, and he looks terribly unusual in this kitchen and terribly calm. Maxwell still has a mouthful of cake so that he actually could answer something, and his heart aches strangely.

“There's still some left,” he says, barely chewing.

He escapes from the kitchen, muttering a crumpled "good night."

Watching Dorian is hard. Maxwell tries to avoid him as much as possible, he even stops going to the library, remaining in his chambers, and no longer sneaks his way to the kitchen. He understands that there's nothing good here. Maxwell understands it and desperately wants to leave at least something else from himself — to himself.

A letter from Galvard Pavus breaks all his resistance.

“Dorian,” he thinks. “I spoke with mother Giselle... No, not like that. Dorian...”

“I have a letter from your father,” says Maxwell without preamble.

Dorian looks bewildered for a little while, but this expression on his face quickly gives way to anger.

“Show me,” he demands.

Maxwell understands that from now on everything will go back to the Abyss.

  
_How could he not see this before?_

Maxwell recalls the results of all his observations and thinks that he was mistaken. Dorian is standing in front of him in this tavern — a reflection of his father, all open and vulnerable — _a vulnerable sun_ — and Maxwell finally understands what a fool he is.

Dorian is magnificent, Dorian is beautiful, Dorian is _hurt_, and he is so unexpectedly _human_ in his resentment. Maxwell sees in him both love and anger mixed up, twisted into a tight ball. One cannot be without the other.

_And not a trace of apparent freedom._

“Dorian is alive,” Maxwell thinks, “and you are a fool.”

“Dorian,” he says out loud. “We always have time to leave.”

Dorian turns around, and Maxwell is almost at a loss to look into his eyes, because now he sees. Being the third wheel in this conversation — too intimate — is not what is expected of him, and he quietly leaves, closing the door behind him.

Maxwell finally understands _everything_, and the cold air chills his head.

“Maker,” he thinks, “no. Please, not again.”

All that he can do afterwards is to give Dorian a short "are you all right?" Dorian is not all right, Maxwell knows that. But he can’t say anything more. He has a tight lump in his throat, so he goes with some kind of nonsense: about courage, choosing their own way and all that stuff.

_“I saw you,”_ Maxwell thinks. _“And I still can’t find anything that I don’t like.”_

It seems like he's just said the last one out loud, because Dorian is silent for a moment. His eyelashes are thick and dark, and his eyes look like drawn with antimony.

Maxwell strokes Dorian's trembling eyelids with his fingers.

Maxwell touches his bare shoulder, and to the touch it is exactly like he imagined: smooth and warm.

Maxwell exposes himself under Dorian's insistent palms, kisses his hair and thinks, “Me too.”

***

“Festis bei umo canavarum,”* Dorian says once.

Maxwell doesn't know if Dorian is the one who should say that.

***

He always knew that this is ephemeral.

That everything ends.

Dorian sees the Tevinter's spiers and the hall of the magisterium when he closes his eyes, he has far-reaching plans and a desperate desire for the best for his country.

“And me?” Maxwell wants to ask. “Is there somewhere me among all of this?”

It is selfish, even petty: how can he think of himself in such a situation. Maxwell looks at Dorian whose eyes shine with a light of a vulnerable sun — and understands everything. What Maxwell feels is almost like humility. Dorian will not be Dorian, if he holds him here, Dorian will leave anyway, sooner or later. Dorian is the best Tevinter can offer. Dorian doesn't want him to come with him. Maxwell is tired of understanding, and yet he understands.

_But it doesn't mean he's not hurt._

**Author's Note:**

> “Festis bei umo canavarum” — "You will be the death of me."


End file.
